Renaissance = Rebirth Vs Middle Ages?
Gabriel Glickman
The European World c. 1500
Renaissance = rebirth vs Middle Ages?
Humanists e.g. Conrad Celtis claim to be acting against ‘gothic barbarity’ and ignorance of prevous centuries.
But reality of greater continuity in social, mental and political structures from ‘Medieval’ to ‘Early Modern’.
Social structures and economic change
- Rising level of economic recovery through C15th after ‘Black Death’ epidemic.
- Continental population is growing at rate of 10 million every fifty-year period 1400-1600.
Elements of continuity - c. 10 per cent population in towns; c. 90 per cent can be classed as peasantry, 1-2 per cent = nobility.
Even in more advanced regions e.g. Northern Italy, Flanders, 75 per cent = peasants.
Urban economic and social development – small but dynamic pockets of Europe
By 1500, printing presses in over two hundred cities or towns in Europe
1460 – foundation of Medici bank, Florence.
1500 - 500 merchant ships in Amsterdam.
Towns as administrative centres, new civic organisations taking responsibility for schools, hospitals, provision of welfare.
- 1478 - Lyon’s Consultattook over responsibilities for poor relief from the Church.
- 1491 – Local government put in charge of poor relief within Swiss Confederation.
- 1497 - Imperial Diet at Lindau, Bavariadeclared that each community should make provisions to care for its own poor.
Poor relief a major theme in key humanist works e.g. Thomas More, Utopia (1516), Juan Luis Vives, De subventione pauperum (1525).
Expansion of Europe originally a product of growth in urban commerce.
Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) funds expeditions in North and West Africa.
1487 – Bartholomeu Dias sails roundCape of Good Hope, charts the sea route into India.
1498 – Vasco da Gama reaches Malabar coast of India.
Power and authority in Europe
1400 – c. 1,000 autonomous polities across Europe.
J.H. Elliott – ‘Composite monarchies’ e.g. Aragon-Castile, English rule over Ireland and Wales, decentralised power in France and the Netherlands.
- Holy Roman Empire – 1500 division into six Imperial Circles (Reichskreise), each with own assembly (Kreistag).
- Nobility the greatest challenge to monarchs, assemble together in representative institutions e,g. cortes in Spanish territories, parliaments in England and Wales, parlements in France.
- Politics in Europe therefore dominated by negotiation between monarchs and regional institutions under aristocratic control..
Key theme of the period – struggle between princes and representative institutions.
Italian city states – organised on different principles e.g. Venice, Florence, Lucca, Genoa, Milan.
e.g. Republican self-governance with different levels of participation among citizens.
- By 1500, Venetians control Crete, Cyprus, Ionian islands, and have extended mainland power south of the Alps.
Religious and intellectual life
Domination of Church of Rome
- challenges take place largely within the fold of the Church after defeat of Lollard and Hussite heresies.
- Sporadic clashes between kings and popes over ecclesiastical appointments.
- Movements for spiritual and intellectual revival within the Church e.g. Erasmian humanism, radical populism of Giralomo Savonarola in Florence.
Renaissance humanism
- Humanist goal – recovery and embrace of the moral, artistic and intellectual potential of man.
- Key early thinkers Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375) foreshadow C15th Italian scholarly fashions e.g. works of Marsilio Ficinio (1433-1499).
- Education reform -, Pietro Paolo Vergerio wrote a manifesto (1402) ‘On the Conduct of Honourable Men’: advocated cycle of five main literary disciplines: modern Latin grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history and moral philosophy.
Humanists promote service of public domain.
- Critique allegedly inward-turning tendencies of Medieval scholastic theology.
- Erasmus, In Praise of Folly (1509) attacks ‘tyranny’ of theologians’.
- Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) - monks and friars contributed nothing to the common good, claiming that ‘Cities are founded on our labours, not by these lazy scarecrows... those hypocrites and strolling scoundrels who preach... contempt of the world to others.’
Involve themselves in government e.g. Machiavelli, Thomas More, Bernardo Giustiniani.
But – humanists look backwards, not forward: cyclical view of human development.
– return to the wisdom of the classical world e.g. Erasmus, Adages.
1462 – re-founding of Platonic Academy in Florence.
Machiavelli, Discourses- ‘all the things of this world in every era have their counterparts in ancient times…this is because these actions are carried out by men who have and have always had the same passions, which, of necessity, must give rise to the same results’.
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Tension between certain classical-humanist assumptions and some Christian tenets e.g. evidenced in Thomas More’s Utopia.
But - humanists interested more in recovery than discovery – hence many shy away from implications of the New World.